Born in 1970, character actor Ko Changseok has made a name for himself playing a series of oddball and sleazy characters. A Japanese Language major, he got drunk during a freshman party only to wake up in the rehearsal space of the traditional Korean mask dance troupe of his college, and one thing leading to another, he decided to join them, thus getting his first taste of stage performances. After some personal circumstances forced him to drop out of college, he joined in 19...More

Born in 1970, character actor Ko Changseok has made a name for himself playing a series of oddball and sleazy characters. A Japanese Language major, he got drunk during a freshman party only to wake up in the rehearsal space of the traditional Korean mask dance troupe of his college, and one thing leading to another, he decided to join them, thus getting his first taste of stage performances. After some personal circumstances forced him to drop out of college, he joined in 1994 the Korean protest song group Hope Bird, with which he recorded a few albums and staged musicals, and where he also met his future wife. In 1999, just after his wedding, he and his wife entered together the theater and film school of the Seoul Institute of the Arts. After a co-running a musical production company for a while, he eventually lost interest in stage productions and set his eyes on films. Although he could already be seen in the 2001 short <Superman in Early Summer>, it was in 2004 that he started to seek film roles in earnest, and, following a string of bit roles in films such as Park Chanwook’s <Sympathy for Lady Vengeance> (2005) and Bong Joonho’s <The Host> (2006), Ko landed a larger supporting role in the Jang Jin-produced comedy <Going By the Book> (2007). In 2008, he was noticed for his bigger part as a film director in Jang Hoon’s successful debut <Rough Cut>, and the director later cast him again in his subsequent films <Secret Reunion> (2010) and <The Front Line> (2011). For the last few years, Ko has appeared in about five films per year. In 2012 he appeared in <Over My Dead Body>, <Dangerously Excited> and <The Grand Heist> among others. 2013 saw him star in a pair of highly anticipated works: <The Spy: Undercover Operation> and Jang Cheol-su’s <Secretly Greatly>. The following year started with the Joseon Era action-comedy <The Huntresses>, modelled after the popular US show <Charlie’s Angels>, which he followed with a colorful character in the media thriller <Tabloid Truth> alongside Kim Kangwoo and the main comic relief part in Kim Woobin crime caper vehicle <The Con Artists>. After appearing in the period comedy <Seondal: The Man who Sells the River> (2016) and the fantasy drama <Be With You> (2017), Ko starred as the leader of the local chapter of the Korean resistance movement in the historical film <Race to Freedom : Um Bok Dong> (2018) and as a propagandist in the period comedy <Jesters: The Game Changers> (2019). In 2021, he came back on the screens playing the chief of the rescue team in <Sinkhole> (2021).Less